On October 31, a bilateral meeting took place between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in Sochi. Before meeting Aliyev, Putin also met Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, and a trilateral meeting between the three leaders are scheduled to follow soon.
Welcoming Aliyev, Putin started his remarks stressing that the trilateral meeting in Sochi was initiated by the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders. “I believe that the purpose of this meeting is to ensure the implementation of all the agreements that we reached in 2020 and 2021,” Russian leader said.
In November 2020, Russia brokered a ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which ended the 44-day war between the two. Apart from assuring ceasefire, the agreement also established the deployment of nearly 2,000 Russian soldiers to Armenian-populated Karabakh as peacekeepers, the return of displaced people to Karabakh, the opening of blocked transport and economic routes in the region, and other important matters. In January 2021, Putin mediated the first meeting with Aliyev and Pashinyan since the war, and the trio agreed to create a working group responsible for working on border delimitation and transport routes.
Putin also referred to the previously reached agreements in his speech.
Today, of course, it will be necessary to talk about the conditions that have arisen in today’s situation, to look for ways to solve the issues that have not yet been resolved. In this regard, I would like to mention an important component of an economic matter: we have created a tripartite working group, which is headed by the deputy prime ministers. They have advanced enough in terms of solving the issues we talked about two years ago. It seems that an additional impulse should be given here as well. I know that the Azerbaijani side is working quite actively in this direction.
Putin
Aliyev, in turn, thanked Putin for “the role he played in the arrangement of the Karabakh conflict”. He also reiterated his belief that the conflict was resolved two years ago when Azerbaijan won the war.
The Karabakh conflict has already gone down in history. It was resolved two years ago. Therefore, from this point of view, there is practically no issue to be discussed here. The normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations is, of course, a format that requires very serious steps. We continue to hope for your active role and the role of Russia in achieving these goals
Aliyev
